While researching for this article, I ran across a 2013 NYT piece on Pew’s finding that in 40% of U.S. families the sole or primary earner is the Mom. In a quarter of married households, the woman is the sole or primary wage earner.

I was surprised recently when I learned that almost every country has federal laws that require paid parental leave. Apparently, there are only four that do not. They are Suriname, Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and The United States. I’m including here the per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of each country and their Gini coefficient, both of which seem relevant for considering the U.S. position on this issue.

Suriname

Per Capita GDP: $16,623

Gini: 52.9

Lesotho

Per Capita GDP: $1,091

Gini: 54.2

Papua New Guinea

Per Capita GDP: $2,517

Gini: 50.9

United States

Per capita GDP: $57,220

Gini: 40.8

The Gini coefficient is a mathematical measure of a nation’s wealth distribution. The lower the value, the more equitable their economy. Higher values indicate an economy that favors people who are already wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Here is a list of the eleven top ten developed countries with their Gini indexes. Canada and the U.S. are tied for #10. The graph compares the wealth distribution of these eleven countries by their standard deviations from the mean.

The newly elected Chairman of the Democratic National Committee made headlines Sunday by saying to a gathering in New Jersey that Republicans “don’t give a s**t about people.”

Political discorse in American is not designed to convince people to buy your plan. It’s designed to make you hate the people who haven’t bought it. And it works. People are not so motivated to go to the polls for an ideal that they think should be happening anyway. They will, however, proudly march there in self-defense. Perhaps we can’t do any better.

But what lights the gasoline is when we start diverting money for the sake of hate mongering. Also in the news on Sunday was reporting on Trumps submission to negotiations over efforts to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of next month. He proposes cutting $1.2 billion from the National Institutes of Health research grants, $1.5 billion from community development block grants and $500 million from transportation project grants. He’s leaving, however, the $3 billion he asked for previously to start his wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Considering our everyday lives, divorced from the manipulative rhetoric we watch on TV, what should we care about more, cancer research and safe bridges, or immigrants and refugees, looking for a better life – and who are statistically less of a threat to us than people born here.